ZOMBIE FORUMS

Maybe I didn't make myself clear here. I tried all I could by myself to fix the problem. Nothing was working. The last time I had had a toenail this bad the only thing that saved it was my Biology teacher accidentally jumping on it. Hurt a lot, but somehow winded up curing it. This time I resorted to asking God's help, and he granted it.



Yeah, I think that's about right. Sometimes you'll get what you ask for, sometimes you won't.

Mighty nice of God.

"Let me roll the DICE OF ETERNITY(tm); if it comes up a 1, I'll grant Kei's prayers."

Excuse me, but I have no respect for a God who plays the lotto with prayers --;;

-MiB
OMEG I GOT TEH WINNING PRAYER

Maybe God doesn't care whether or not you respect him.

Maybe he's just a bastard.

Eh?

For the record, I wasn't saying that he picks prayers at random, only those which are minor enough to not interfere with his Divine Plan. Which, being ineffable, I guess would make it seem random to us humans :)

Then he did a lowsy job of creating us, if he expects us to worship a bastard God. Don't care how powerful you are, if you're a bastard I ain't gonna respect you.





Tell me, Jedi, how exactly is it possible for us to interfere with his plans, if he didn't want us to?

-MiB

Thats why I can't believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God that most Christian's describe. To be all of those would mean he was all powerful, all knowing, and all good. To be good, one wants to get rid of evil. To be all good, one would want to get rid of all evil. To be all knowing, one would surely know of the evil. To be all powerful, one would be capable of stopping the evil. Now, if God is OP, OS, and OB, then he would eliminate all evil instantly, as its in his power to do so. So, why is there evil in the world?

Perhaps your view of what constitutes 'good' needs some refining.

Mayhaps there needs to be evil so there can be a definition for good.

My opinion does not matter. I'm just opinng in response to Kry. Don't expect me to get involved in anything else.

Then why was the universe created with this flaw (it would surely be a flaw if witnessed by an perfectly good God.)

Such a flaw would have been correctable by an all-powerful being, and circumventable by an all-knowing being.

Perfection would get kinda boring after a while, wouldn't it? Ah whatever, human standards, etc. etc...

Whatever, I'm neither debator nor philosopher...

Edit: Kitsune, kinda my thoughts exactly... but they're not my thoughts! Augh!

Who says, to a perfectly good God, evil is a flaw?

Our definition of 'good' is certainly limited. Even our definition of 'perfect good' is a human definition.

A perfectly good God may not be what humans term 'perfectly good.' Who is to say God is anything like what humans define Vim as?

The problem in your argument rests on your assumption that God holds the human definition of 'good' to be the same as Vis. Considering God sees all and knows all--it's not very likely that Ve has the same view of the universe as us.

I know that philosophy has holes. Kits proding in some of the same places I did.

This is why religious types love the Bible, Qu'ran, or one of several other highly suspect books. Above all, they tell us "what God thinks is right."

Fixed to emphasize what you were really saying.

Well, even if our definition of good is suspect, how about our definitions of "intelligent" and "wise."

Now, wisdom is (in Biblical terms, if I'm not mistaken) a positive attribute (don't wanna say "good" in this conversation) that God gifts certain people with. There are wise kings, wise elders, and wise so ons in the Bible. The term "wise" in Scripture is generally synonymous with "intelligent," in most of the ways we now use it. Point one.


At any rate, God would not condemn anyone to Hell for an attribute he gave them, not if he is all good. Furthermore, God will not lie, if he is all good. Point two.


We are told by many (read: nearly all) Judeo-Christan-Islamic sects that if you don't have faith, you're going straight to Hell. Point three.


An intelligent, reasoning (read: "wise") man (or woman, whatever) who has the powers of reason and a sharp mind will question what is told to him, either to satisfy a desire to be more acquanted with the way things work, or because of an actual skepticism. Now, upon careful observation, an intelligent man will realize that there's no logical reason to believe in God. His parents, even discounting the very real possibility that they're yuppies and just want an easy answer for their kid, are fallable, as are their ancestors, and in the two plus millenia since Biblical event supposedly transpired, there's a lot of room for error. Scripture is fairry obvously something that can easily be corrupted for secular politics, and again, 2+ millenia is a long time for corruption to root it. And if our intelligent man still wants to believe in god because it's comforting, then that's faith. Point four.

However, God (if we allow that he does exist) created a world where we don't have to take anything on faith that we are not constantly reassured of. To wit: we don't know, a priori, that gravity exists, but there's this thing that happens to just about everything, it's that they fall down. So we name this whatever-makes-things-fall "gravity," and though we don't really know it exists (hey, maybe there are magnets in the bottom of everything, and that lump of iron and the center of the earth is a giant unipole), we are constantly reassured that it does (well, we've cut things open and it seem like there are no magnets to be found, and if there was a giant unipole in the center of the earth we would explode). So God has given us (or put us in, however you prefer to phrase it), a world in which there are logical, reasonable, or at least constant reassurances of, everything except: His existence. Point five.


So, given two attribute by God (namely: existence in this world and intelligence [or wisdom]), a man would believe things that are either logical, or that he is constantly reassured of, and be skeptical of those of which he is not. Point six.


Since there is no a priori, no analytical, no self-necessitating proof of God, and there is no constant reassurrance of His existence. So a man gifted with existence and intelligence would be skeptical of God's existence, he would not have faith. Point Seven.


But then God has created a man and gifted him with two attributes that directly lead to a loss of faith, and then to hellfire. This is a paradox.



Of course, my little essay has flaws, but they aren't along the lines of "well, God might have a different definition of 'good' and 'wise,'" because if He does have different definitions, then He is no longer omnipotent or perfectly benevolent in the way we know him to be. So I'm arguing only against the existence of the omnipotent, omniscient, and ultimately benevolent God of Judeo-Christian mythology.

Then perhaps he did a lousy job of creating us. And as I said, maybe he doesn't care if MiB respects Him or not, and is thus free to be a bastard. I don't see the logical contradiction.


It's not. That was my whole point. I was suggesting, on Akuma's behalf, that God could have large plans set in stone, but that some of the details are minor enough to not make much of a difference, and these are the things which can be affected by prayer. And if answering said prayer would be contrary to His Divine Plan of Eternal Ineffability, it wouldn't get answered. Simple. Whore. [/residual MiB]

Well, if He's omnipotent and ultimately benevolent, then He couldn't have done a "lousy" job, not even if He wanted to... *winces from the brain paradox*

Anyway, if God's benevolent, He wouldn't want to lie, if He's omnipotent, He wouldn't have to lie, if He's still around and supporting, y'know, any of the religions out there, He wants followers (they all say He wants followers, if He's supporting them He supports what they say, and He neither wants nor has need to lie). But why on earth didn't He just create us all with an inborn sense of faith? Why didn't He just make us perfect little sheep? Saying that He created us with choice so that He would have the respect and admiration of those who had the option not to revere and admire Him is analagous to saying that I will create a very lifelike andriod and write a fully sentient AI for it, in hopes that it will turn out to be female and sleep with me.

In a chaotic universe no detail is minor enough to not make much of a difference. But because God is omniscient he can theoretically balance the effects of two, three, or more events so that the chaotic effects cancel each other.

Example in point: Akuma Kei's toenail. If God hadn't magically cured it he wouldn't have brought up that point, he may have brought up a different one altogether, perhaps one more or less convincing. Which would have inevitably lead this conversation in a different manner. And would have therefore effected what we talked about, which would make everyone pay attention to this debate more or less carefully. Develop different ideas. The effects go on and on over one little cured toenail.

So either God much perform a delicate, tricky, complicated balance of n chaotic equations with variable, near infinite inputs (which for Him I'm sure is child's play). Or He says "Screw the plan," and heals your toe, which may cause the downfall of His Great Design. Or it was His plan all along, and if so, why not feed the starving children? Or perhaps He didn't do anything at all and your toenail healed itself (or destroyed the nerve that registers pain at that location.)

Situation A) Cost does not equal the gains, mostly because if he has to balance the equation there is no net gain. So why do it? It's pointless

Situation B) Cost does not equal gains, mostly because there is no gains to scrapping his great plan over your toenail.

Situation C) The common argument of Christians, but at the same time anti-Christian because an effect of this situation is fate. And according to the Christian faith, you can do whatever you want, you have free will. Free will and fate cannot exist together.

Situation D) The most reasonable one in my opinion. But then again, this *is* just my opinion.

To extrapolate what the person who just posted said...

He's omni-fucking-potent. If something was set in stone, he can change whatever he wants around so it doesn't effect it at all. Thats kinda part of the deal with having no limits to your power, ne?

Thus, prayer is an idiotic idea and we should drop talking about it, because from it goes all these stupid contradictions that you just don't have to deal with when you say "My damn toe-nail healed by itself."

-MiB
Oh Lord, please let my words get through to these MORONS

(kidding)

There's no paradox. I said Ve could could be a bastard, i.e. not omnibenevolent, and as such could have done a shoddy job on purpose. Just for kicks. Which would mean MiB wouldn't respect Ver, but I think God can live with that...



Within certain constraints (like, say the time until the sun goes nova, or even the heat death of the universe), some are. If God plucked a single atom from a bench in New Brunswick and dropped it in Antartica, I doubt the timeline would be seriously affected. Just because it's possible for a butterfly's wings to cause a storm 200 miles away, doesn't mean it has to.


And of course God is required to do only things which make sense to you. What makes you so sure God is even sane?


See "insane/bastard" comments previously.



But perhaps Ve likes to work within the boundaries of causality, in which actions have effects. Vis Plan would still be unaffected, as Ve would simply do everything required to bring it about within said rules.


I've said it before, but... Weirdest. Priest. Ever. :)


I meant to comment on this before…

The Matrix-fanatic in me feels compelled to mention that this is exactly the type of god the Oracle is. Of course, she has something of an excuse, since she's not omnipotent, and thus it's the only way she can get things done. And she risked her own life and the destruction of two worlds in the process.

Still a manipulative bitch, though.

...

Note the topic of discussion was "the christian god as popularly portrayed in Christian culture"

Thus you LOSE like the dirty whore you are.



[ObMiB]

If your arguement is that God cannot be understood logically at all, then why are you bothering to engage in a logical arguement about God? If you wish, just state that and leave, rather than mucking up the thread with useless bullshit that makes any halfway intelligent person's head hurt.

[/ObMiB]

Supposing you're right, this entire discussion is moot and everyone loses. The theological equivalent of "rocks fall, everyone dies."



Not only do you say "God cannot work in ways we understand" but in the next sentence you claim he works within the bounds of casuality? Isn't that a bit, uhm, contradictory? He's an insane bastard who doesn't give a crap about anyone but himself...but he wants to play by the rules.

Again, I referr you to the above comment. Sure, it makes sense if you claim God shouldn't make any sense at all to us, but if thats the case why are you bothering me?



oops, wrong quote, and paraphrased to boot...



I <3 WI

Erm, I didn't mean prayer as a tool of comfort and connection to one's comrades in religion was stupid; I was claiming that, prayer as a tool to get one's will done via some idiotic concept of God as our babysitter is not only rather, euhm, ignorant and a throwback in terms of intellectual honesty, but also a black mark on the person morally.

When I pray, it is to help myself find meaning in something, not divine intervention. Its a plea to my own religiousness; I don't expect God to fly down from the clouds and teach me. But it makes me feel better all the same, and gives me clarity of thought. In that, prayer is a good thing.



Which is a good arguement on why exactly God wouldn't act that way. If he works within the bounds of a powerful but limited being, then he isn't really omnipotent then, is he?

-MiB

I'm not arguing that a butterfly wing flap *will* cause a storm 200 miles way. That's almost assinine to believe. I'm arguing that a difference of input is much more important than most people believe. If in one universe a butterfly flaps it's wings and in another it doesn't then that will eventually change the world's weather patterns only a few years down the road.

And I have to point out the huge difference between trading two atom's places and curing the toe of person.



Then God's perfect plan would be short of perfect, wouldn't it? Forced to make approximations. Doesn't sound like an all-knowing, all-powerful diety to me.



If God were mentally unstable then why would the direction of his infinite power be towards someone's toe? He could make this planet explode into it's constituent atoms and we would be powerless to stop it. If God were insane then it's most likely that we'd be dead.

If God is a complete bastard and only playing mind games with us don't you think that he could do a bit better? You know, like make every day look like an episode out of Lain.